User talk:Cepstrum/Archive1
WELCOME! __TOC__ Template for adding a new discussion Welcome to my talk page Please feel free to leave messages etc. for me. I'm new at massive collaborative wiki editing, so please forgive any missteps I'm bound to make. I am a long time MA reader but only recently decided to join to help with minor copy-edits. So I'm not that familiar with MA policies, interacting with a lot of other editors, or even the MediaWiki style (I'm used to using small Twiki wikis at my lab.) For now I'm going to keep the automatic welcome message below, for it contains info and links I should probably be mindful of. MA's Initial Greeting to Me Yes, it was automatically generated. But I'm keeping it here to (a) make my talk page look bigger ^_^ and (b) for its many handy links for newbies such as me. Welcome to Memory Alpha, Cepstrum! I've noticed that you've already made some contributions to our database – thanks for your edit to the Unimatrix Zero (episode) page! We all hope that you'll enjoy our activities here and decide to join our community. If you'd like to learn more about working with the nuts and bolts of Memory Alpha, I have a few links that you might want to check out: * Our policies and guidelines provides links to inform you on what is appropriate for Memory Alpha and what is not. Particular items of note are the canon policy, the editing guidelines, our point of view, copyrights and guidelines for proper etiquette. * includes a basic tutorial about how to use our special wikitext code here on Memory Alpha. * Naming conventions provides guidelines on how to name a new page that you may want to create. * The Manual of Style is an overview of the basic guidelines for how to format and style your articles. * is a list of suggestions that can help you put together an article that might end up on our Featured Articles list someday. * See the user projects page for current projects of our archivists, or help us to reduce the number of stubs. * Look up past changes you have made in your log. * Keep track of your favorite Memory Alpha articles through your very own . * Create your own user page and be contacted on this page, your . One other suggestion: if you're going to make comments on talk pages or make other sorts of comments, please be sure to sign them with four tildes (~~~~) to paste in your user name and the date/time of the comment. If you have any questions, please feel free to post them in our Ten Forward community page. Thanks, and once again, welcome to Memory Alpha! -- 31dot (Talk) 11:37, September 5, 2010 :The above named user is the most currently available administrator to contribute to Memory Alpha; their signature was automatically added by User:Wikia. If you have any immediate questions or concerns, you may contact that user through their talk page. My talk page needs YOU! It's far too lonely.....I'm still waiting for someone to leave me a message. :/ About talk page comments Just as a friendly advice, please try to be a little more concise in your talk page comments. There's no need to apologize in advance for things you haven't even done yet, or things that are standard practice. You sometimes come across as overly submissive, up to the point where I thought about whether this might be some strange new form of trolling - if it is, it won't get you anywhere. :) You will most likely get more, and better, responses by employing a more "conventional" writing style when asking for or requesting something. -- Cid Highwind 13:42, October 4, 2010 (UTC) :Dear Cid, :I'm terribly sorry for coming across as being a "troll"! I really don't mean to ever do that. I am very, very afraid of causing trouble and am unused to massive wiki editing. I don't know how to respond. It seems if I try to apologize when admins say I'm "nitpickish", "trolling", etc., I only get in more trouble. Please advise me and assume good, sincere faith on my part. I feel bad for this. What can I do? I've asked my "personal" admin User:31dot for advice. Perhaps you can assist me until I am able to be a positive community member? :One thing that's confused me is the article talk pages. I have been making edits to the Borg philosophy, and usually Sulfur will come within minutes to undo my edits. Most of what Sulfur has done has been very helpful, for it allowed me to better understand MA guidelines. Sometimes, however, some of my edits are simply undone with little or no explanation. I've tried using the article's talk page for a dialogue, but so far, no one has responded. I would fully accept Sulfur's revisions, for he is an admin/vet/pro, but I'd really appreciate an explanation so I can learn and avoid such gaffes in the future. :If you and other admins believe I'm not a useful member and should stop editing, I would do so. I just need guidance etc. I never would knowingly engage in an edit-war or edit-conflict: all my mistakes are a result of using an iPod to do this and lack of experience. I would like to be allowed to continue editing, but if you et al. believe I'm more of a nuisance and my potential for becoming a good member outweighs the growing pains I'll no doubt incur, I will abide by your decision. :Thank you for your time and consideration (and patience!) :Regards, :--Cepstrum 15:31, October 4, 2010 (UTC) :) ^_^ See... that reply is exactly what I was talking about. No need to lengthily apologize for each and everything. That might have shortened the 2KB text block to a simple request. At the moment, I'm not even sure what exactly it is that you are asking - so, if you could give me that in a nutshell (preferably on this talk page, and not yet another), I might have a reply for you. -- Cid Highwind 15:40, October 4, 2010 (UTC) Could we please use the talk page? :Moved from Talk:Borg philosophy Hi. User:Sulfur and others have made many useful corrections to my edits to make it conform to MA's guidelines. I'm wondering: could we please use the talk page to discuss further significant changes? I know I'm a dumb newbie, but I'd really appreciate it if we could have a dialogue here. That way I can better learn the "ropes". My apologies for causing trouble if I have. I really don't mean to and will accept the corrections from the pros/vets/admins. I just want to be a positive contributor. It's difficult (and sometimes discouraging) for me to have my significant edits undone without me fully understanding why. And I *don't* want to engage in an edit war: I'll accept your decisions. Please, though, could you discuss them with me here? :) Thanks! Regards. --Cepstrum 15:11, October 4, 2010 (UTC) :Can we not add umpteen needless sections to this talk page? Thanks! -- Cid Highwind 15:14, October 4, 2010 (UTC) Rats! Sorry, Cid! I thought I wad supposed to mention significant changes here. I was also trying to solicit feedback from those who've been undoing some of my edits (such as removing the section format) so we could have a dialogue here. I guess I am unclear about the purpose of articles' talk pages. And truly: I do feel bad. To be honest, I have a very poor self-esteem and am easily frustrated to discover I'm causing such harm. I think I should either cease editing or find an admin who'd be willing to "mentor" me: ie, point out what I did wrong and what I should have done instead. Again, I apologize for making "umpteen" comments/suggestions here. I honestly thought I was doing the right thing. Have you any advice for me? Should I erase all the text I added on this talk page? I'm eager and willing to learn. Thanks. --Cepstrum 15:42, October 4, 2010 (UTC) :OK, tutor mode - basic things about talk pages: :#Use them for their purpose only - article talk pages are for discussion of the article content. Your above comment seems to rather be a question about talk pages in general, or commentary directed at a specific contributor. We have general talk pages (including the "Ten Forward" forum) for the former, and user talk pages for the latter. :#If you want to discuss changes to an article, then by all means, add to the talk page. However, just state what you think needs to be changed, and why - don't apologize for thinking about changing an article, but only if no one objects and I could perhaps revert it myself if the changes are not good enough... you get the drift? :) :#Don't take things too personal, and don't assume that others do: we like to be concise and to the point. This should not be mistaken for rudeness, and we will not consider you rude if you leave out the apologies, excessive smileys and polite addresses. :-- Cid Highwind 16:02, October 4, 2010 (UTC) concealer.css for mobile I doubt it will be sensible to do this. The only thing this css file does is to hide some page elements from view, and those elements are most likely specific to the "standard" skin and not its mobile variant. We will ask Wikia about problems with the mobile skin, and how it eventually re-uses some of the other CSS, but without access to any mobile viewing device, there's not much I can do to help you at the moment. Please be patient! -- Cid Highwind 12:43, October 8, 2010 (UTC) : Cid: : on the contrary, I'm 'exceedingly' grateful for your help. Things work satisfactory now, and I see no reason for you (or anyone but me) to rush to change the look of the mobile skin. I really can't describe how thankful I am. And the concealer (I assume) is working fine when Wikia decides to load pages without the mobile skin ^_^. The only real problem was changing my text to black in my wikia.css instead of my wikiaphone.css. : Just to assure you, I have no problems that need addressing right now. I only thought that perhaps down the line you et al. might want to create a mobile skin that is consistent with the regular one. And there are some useful web sites that allow a web designer to view what a page will look like to a mobile user. I can look up the link and give it to you if you're interested. But for now, I'd say things are just fine. : Out of curiosity, do you know if we'll still be able to make changes to our CSSs when Wikia finally implements everything and takes away user control? If we can't, then I'd be stuck! Thanks again. You're very kind and thoughtful to work on my behalf: evidently I'm either the only one forced to use a mobile device or the only one who cares when I can't read/edit MA! --Cepstrum 13:12, October 8, 2010 (UTC) ::What are these sites? I could throw one together once everything is working. - 13:20, October 8, 2010 (UTC) ::: Archduk3, thanks for your willingness to help. But new "problems" have 'just' arisen. Now, my mobile view looks like a strange hybrid between the regular skin and the mobile one. The background suddenly changed to dark (like in regular MA), so I had to change the body text to light gray. But some things still show up with a white background, such as TOC, categories, captions....well, pretty much everything that isn't part of the article. Clearly, something is going on at Wikia: my mobile viewing keeps changing! Good news is that it's still readable, just ugly and a little annoying. I think it would be best to wait to work on a mobile CSS for interested MA users until Wikia stops constantly changing things! heh heh. The link to the site for mobile viewing on a regular browser for web developers is on my really old iPod. I'll see if I can locate it and post it here soon. Thanks again. --Cepstrum 13:37, October 8, 2010 (UTC) Link to mobile browser test site Here is one I quickly found; I believe there are others. Here. Wait. Oh rats. That site only gives you info on how "good" it will look for mobile viewers. I'm certain there are actual ones out there, but I just can't recall them right now. I'll post any I find here, but I won't be making it a big priority, for MA is working acceptably for me, and Wikia keeps changing the mobile format! --Cepstrum 13:46, October 8, 2010 (UTC)